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Monthly Archives: January 2014

‘What drives history is the human ambition to alter one’s condition to match one’s hopes’

‘Science strides ahead; politics stumbles around like a drunk’

In his own words: ‘train set’ or ‘turgid porridge’?

“Bonkers, and therefore irresistible: you’re being given such an enormous train set to play with” – that’s how Andrew Marr describes his reaction to the BBC’s suggestion to write an 8-hour History of the World. He spent three years and read two thousand books to write it, and it had over 10 million viewers when broadcast on BBC1 in 2012.

Marr is not a professional historian, but an English graduate, former newspaper editor with The Economist & The Independent and BBC political editor. Journalism, though, is supposed to be the first draft of history.

He admits: ‘there’s a great danger with a book like this: it can just become a kind of turgid porridge of…